


living life in an illusion

by Mamihlapinatapai



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-27 03:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamihlapinatapai/pseuds/Mamihlapinatapai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grace, he thinks, is a funny thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Here's the thing.

Before lost dads, and slushies, and weigh-ins that got football players lucky, he was just _Noah_.

But, Noah spent every day of eighth grade crying himself to sleep, and he can't be that kid anymore. He _won't_ be that kid anymore, because that kid, yeah, he got his heart broken and he refuses to let that happen again.

He loses his virginity to a cheerio the last day of summer before his freshman year. He's tipsy and she's hammered, and it's over too soon and when she leaves he doesn't feel anything but empty.

He throws up twice and goes back to the party.

(The next time he downs two tequila shots off a cheerio's stomach, he makes sure he's drunk enough not to feel anything.)

The first slushie of his high school career is an accident.

The football players grab them from 7-eleven before first period like always, but Derek Hutchins's high, which never leads to anything redeeming. Within seconds of entering the front doors Derek's smile turns Cheshire-like.

"Puckerman, you look a little over-heated, how about something to cool you down?"

It's instinct really, to duck. A slushie to the face doesn't seem like a good way to start off a potentially awesome day, and he really doesn't feel like bringing home a purple stained jersey for his mom to wash after her double-shift. So, yeah, he ducks and then a bunch of things happen at once.

The entire hallway goes silent, someone gasps behind him, and Derek's smirk widens significantly. When he rotates to the right to see exactly what could have silenced two-hundred high school students so efficiently, his stomach drops out.

Rachel Berry. The singing, star placing, I'm-going-to-be-a-Broadway-starlet _freak_. The freak that's now officially purple, and doing a seriously impressive fish impersonation.

She glances up at him like he _purposely_ moved so Derek would hit her, and then squares her shoulders and walks towards the second floor bathrooms.

The crowd breaks into laughter at the exact moment Greg Peterson jumps on his back with a shouted, "Dude that was awesome. Did you see her face?"

And he did, but he also saw a flash of betrayal, and all he can think of is the way Rachel's tongue popped out to wipe her lip before she turned her back on him.

The rest is cherry-flavored, crushed-ice _history_.

Until Glee, and teen pregnancy, and Neil Diamond, that is.

-O-

By the middle of sophomore year, Rachel Berry's skirts have gotten shorter, her stars brighter, and her voice that much more annoying.

They're partners for a Biology assignment, and because she's got to be freaking perfect like all the time, she tells him that while she appreciates his efforts, she'd really be more comfortable doing it herself. He shrugs and makes his way to the door, but apparently shorter skirts aren't the only thing she's acquired to torture him with.

She stops him saying that even though he won't actually be participating in the experiment, it would be educational for him to stay and observe. He doesn't argue because technically she's getting him the A, and he really has nowhere better to be. So he sits on the stool across from her, preparing for an hour of silence.

Five minutes later she begins to babble and doesn't stop for the next hour and a half.

(He seriously considers setting himself on fire with the bunsen burner on the lab table around the forty minute mark, but he's sort of afraid she won't stop talking long enough to put him out.)

\----------

Junior year was supposed to kick ass. He had started a pool cleaning business in July, and by August had seen the ceilings of half the mothers in Lima. His badassness rating had skyrocketed, partially because of said cougars, and partially because he and Finn had become like total football _studs_. So, yeah, he was pretty pumped for this third year of his high school experience.

Last period of his first day back. That's how far he gets before he realizes that this could quite possibly be the worst year of his life. (Excluding the year of lost fathers and alcoholic moms.)

Rachel Berry's in his Spanish class. With Finn. Who she stares at like they're freaking _soulmates_.

Two weeks, a package of mary jane, and one very freaked out Finn later, Glee enters his life and nothing's ever the same.

\----------

When he's seventeen, his sister teeters the line between being young enough to watch Cinderella and old enough to threaten to tell their mom about the tequila bottle under his bed if he doesn't join her. He's also seventeen when he realizes Quinn's a princess, and Finn's a prince, and he'll never be the guy who gets the girl.

So when Quinn calls him two hours after weigh-ins he brings wine coolers. (Because he may not ever get the girl, but no one said a damn thing about borrowing her.)

Her halo falls off somewhere between watching a Friends episode, and him unclasping her bra with one hand in the dark of her bedroom. Deflowering the queen is almost as rewarding as her ignoring him the next day.

(If he can't be the prince then he'll be the villain, because then at least he'll get a role in this fucked up version of a Disney movie.)

\----------

He breaks his first nose when he's sixteen. He's suspended for a week and the counselor at school calls his mom. He sits outside the door head in his hands and listens to phrases like "aggressive behavior" and "emotionally withdrawn" and feels sick.

His mom takes him to a psychiatrist, but he spends the first two sessions staring at the wall without talking, and his last two fucking her on her desk.

He figures she got the message that he's unfixable when she tells his mom that she thinks it would be better if they find another doctor.

They don't. She just makes him promise that he'll stop going around hitting people without a reason. He doesn't bother telling her that the kid with the broken nose called her a slut. She wouldn't have believed it anyway.

That's when he first begins to hate his father, and spends the next five hours in the dark of his room burning the pictures he had salvaged from the kitchen garbage the night he disappeared.

The truth comes out and Finn sucker punches him so hard he can't see out of his left eye. And yet somehow the spray painted _slut_ on Quinn's locker fails to escape his gaze. His third nose is broken two weeks after his sixteenth birthday.

He gets another psychiatrist because apparently he has anger-management problems. His mom probably could have saved her money. He doesn't need someone to point that out.

This time he doesn't waste the first two weeks.

His mom cries and rubs a spot on her arm where her third boyfriend, after his dad, hit her so hard she thought it was broken. He stops hitting people and instead smashes his fists into walls.

He puts his hand through a window when Quinn loses the baby in December, and he thinks it's sort of funny that he's grieving for something no one really wanted. He drives himself to the ER because he's just that badass and pulls up Mrs. Taylor's number on his cell.

(On the way home he wishes he was Catholic, because guilt blows.)

Glee comforts Quinn, and Finn, and never him. He's tired of being the villain but he's been playing the part for so long he's not sure he knows how to stop.

He breaks another promise to his mom because he really just doesn't give a damn anymore, and Johnson's nose was just begging to be broken. That's four.

His fists return to walls when the suspensions begin to threaten his chance at a football scholarship, because if he doesn't get the hell out of Lima he's going to snap and pull a _Carrie_ on everyone at prom.

\----------

Finn cheats on Quinn with Rachel and everybody saw it coming, even the blonde beauty herself but she plays victim because she knows her part, too, and he thinks maybe she doesn't know how to stop either.

She's back to being a Cheerio because everybody knew Sue would never win without her star, and the student body whispers insults at Rachel's back like they've forgotten the Queen's fall from grace less than three months ago.

When he's seventeen, he breaks another nose for another girl. (Except this "slut" is someone he doesn't even like entirely. This time, it's because of a tiny brunette who managed to steal his heart and shatter it all within the same week, but he'd really rather not to talk about that, thank-you _very_ much.

\----------

He heard once that when you're sixteen everything feels like the end of the world; he's beginning to agree.

He sees her during football practice, sometimes games, but mostly just practice. He thinks it's because of the way people treat her in crowds, and the guilt for that pushes on his chest until he feels like he can't breathe.

She stares at Finn, mostly. At least that's what he assumes, because the wind whips her hair across her face making it hard to read. Not that he really wants to see a girl chose his best from over him again, anyway.

But sometimes, when he's running, arms held out for a pass from Finn, he feels her eyes on him. It unnerves him in a way he can't explain.

He's decides to blame her for the team losing.

\----------

Despite her overachievement, and her need to speak to him, like, _all the time_ , he's never found her unattractive. She might make him want to set himself on fire, or rupture his eardrums with the closest sharp object, but she's _hot_.

He had even, briefly, oh so _briefly_ , entertained the idea of asking her out freshman year. She ruined it for him, though. Bitch was labeled on her head the minute she walked past the Cheerio captain's boyfriend in a skirt that made her look like sin personified.

Rachel Berry was unofficially announced off-limits because Michael Ricker wanted to get lucky that night. Freak was spray-painted on her locker by the end of the day, and that was the end of that, because at the core he had always been a coward.

\----------

He ends up having to stay late after practice to run laps. The guy who happened to write slut on Quinn's locker was an assistant coach's nephew. Figures.

When he finally gets out, she's sitting on the hood of his car. It's freezing out so he doesn't stop, just heads right to the driver's door and hops in, turns the engine over and the heat on high.

Apparently she takes this as an open invitation, and climbs in after him.

(They really need to work on her communication skills.)

The car's been quiet for maybe three minutes until he starts to worry, because he's never heard her silent for this long, when she finally speaks.

It's practically a whisper, but the sound bounces around the cab like she's yelling.

"What the hell are you doing?" And he actually freezes, like somehow he's been something wrong without actually moving.

"I… wait. What?"

"I understand that this whole situation is so absolutely _screwed up_ , it's ridiculous, but defaulting to self-destruction in front of the entire school seems like an incredibly stupid idea."

(He realizes two things during this conversation. The first being when Rachel Berry's furious, she deviates from her normal thesaurus-like vocabulary. She isn't exactly subtle, but she's always struggled with that, so.)

"The power couple really knows how to screw people up," is his response, along with a shrug that he hopes comes off as indifference. "And since when do you notice when I default to anything?" It's meant to call her out, embarrass her so she stops looking at him like Quinn did when his dad left.

"He hurt me, too." And then she gets out of the truck. He pauses, then calls her name before she can slam the door.

"Hey Rach, I just um… I… I'm sorry." He's not quite sure what exactly he's apologizing for. The slushie incident(s), the _whore_ that was thrown at her in the hallway while he stood at his locker this morning, or because Finn and Quinn have always had a tendency to take other people down with them, but she seems to take it as one for all three.

"I know." She's gone before he can move.

The second thing he realizes: he's in love with Rachel Berry.

(Okay, maybe it's three things, because he is so very, very _fucked_.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He taught Finn how to hold his liquor, and screwed his way through both the girls' volleyball and soccer teams until he became first-string, and started in on a Cheerio's only kick. He shaved his head, and built walls, and made sure that when he walked through the halls everybody was too scared of getting their faces smashed in to notice the cracks.

She tutors him once.

English, because that was his first class sophomore year and he's never been very receiving towards his alarm clock.

She's standing at her locker when he saunters up, and there's a flash of a change of clothes before she slams her locker shut. He gets a flash of slushies and stained white tops, and, just for a moment, feels sick.

Then he remembers that he's Noah _fucking_ Puckerman, and guilt isn't even in his vocabulary.

(Actually not a lot of words are in his vocabulary, but _guilt_ has always been one that he reserves for the brunette in front of him.)

She says no the first time he asks. And the second. And the third. By the fourth he's ready to sell his soul because there's a new no pass, no play rule and honestly, he really doesn't want to have to seduce Mrs. Anderson. Again.

(Her husband's huge. Like break your neck with his thighs, huge. Despite previous opinions, he does value his life)

He doesn't quite sell his soul, but it's a close call, because no slushies for two weeks is going to kill his rep.

Five minutes in, and he's debating the merits of walking to Mrs. Anderson's room, and betting on if he could outrun Mr. Anderson on adrenaline later, when she stops lecturing him about how she has no idea how he got this far in high school English, and gives him a look girls usually reserve for dead puppies.

"Oh. You can't read can you?"

He gives her the look. The one that is really supposed to portray his astonishment at how absolutely, completely psycho she is. But apparently she interprets it as a _no_ and shifts into a suspiciously hug-lik position. He takes two steps back because he's never been a hugger, and not because she smells like apples and cinnamon, and it makes his head hurt.

"Hey. I can read, okay. I just choose not to."

She walks out and he almost gets his face broken.

(Again.)

\----------

He doesn't sleep the night after their conversation in his truck. He lies in bed and traces the outline of the ultrasound picture he keeps in the top drawer of his dresser, because he's never been one to admit feelings and admitting that he's falling for Rachel Berry feels a lot like growing up.

He's never been good at that, either.

He's already tense by the time he gets to school, and then Rachel is in his line of sight the whole fucking day. She's there, but she's not looking at him, and not talking to him, and death by hanging is a better option than this emo, self-suffering he's taken to. The thing is, he's seen a lot, he's even _done_ a lot, but what she has to go through on a daily basis isn't something he usually goes out of his way to figure out. So it's strange watching the captain of the basketball team tosses a cherry slushie at her after third period, and before fifth when a sophomore cheerleader trips her, and laughs when her books slam to the ground, all he can think is this school would burn her _at the stake_ if they could. It makes him want to hit something.

So by the time she gets to her locker after last period he's already scrubbing off the _bitch_ that's written across it. She just sighs something like thanks, and grabs a sponge.

He calls it progress in the never-ending cycle that will be courting Rachel Berry.

\----------

And then he gets a letter from his dad, and Rachel Berry goes out the window.)

Three years too late, his dad decides that maybe he isn't fucked up enough, and sends him a letter two paragraphs too long. (There's one _I'm sorry_ , and it's for taking so long to tell him that he's remarried. There is, though, a beautiful picture of a smiling baby, and he skips school to spend the rest of the day on the bathroom floor trying not to throw up.)

Three days after that, and he gives up on progressing because he's tired, and really, it's not like he was ever any good at any of this, so. (And maybe because she burns _oh so_ bright, and the last thing he wants to do is dim that.)

Of course her communication skills would fail her again, so she comes looking for him. He hasn't been in school for three days, and there are fifteen missed calls and three voicemails flashing on the phone he had tossed in the general direction of _fuckitall_. There's one from Quinn, and one from Finn, and he's pretty sure there's one from both of them together last time he checked, but listening to the name twins right now wouldn't help him off this floor he's named denial. (He still spends that day in bed, because they'll sound _happy_ , and it's not fair that Quinn gets forgiven for her lie, and Finn gets forgiven for Rachel, but he's still standing in the back with _bastard_ tattooed on his head.)

It's the first time she's been in his room since the week that they don't talk about, and for just a second she pauses. (He's never been an optimist but he kind of hopes she's remembering a lace bra and roaming hands, just so he's not the only pathetic one in the room.)

He tilts his head back from his position on the floor, and he catches a glance of the same look she had on in his truck, head tilted to the side and mouth turned down, but it's gone so fast he thinks he might have imagined it.

He doesn't want her sympathy, doesn't want anyone's, and for some inexplicable reason she seems to understand this. He's half tempted to check to see if stubborn is also stamped across his forehead.

Instead, she moves silently across his room to lie down next to him, tugs the letter out of his hand, scans it, and then begins to talk.

"You know, Noah, it's really not good for your academic career to miss so much school, because as you know work ethic is important to establish before-"

She goes on for twenty more minutes, and somewhere during her lecture on his effort towards understanding geometry and how she knows he has drive somewhere beneath all his indifference, because Holly Jefferson was very adamant about keeping her virginity from him, he lets out a laugh that kind of turns into a sob and she stops, but still doesn't look at him.

"I know." She whispers it, and just for a second the ball that's coiled deep in his chest loosens.

They spend the next hour in complete silence, and he begins to think maybe she's courting him, too.

\----------

In ninth grade, he takes up running, because he has yet to learn how to punch people correctly, and he needs to get his frustration out somehow.

He runs a three mile lap every morning at six. He'll run until his lungs are about to burst, and he can forget about the crying he could hear through his bedroom wall at night.

Coincidentally, he has to go right past her house, and she's always practicing yoga positions in front of her window by the time he turns the corner onto her street. The first time he saw her, he ran right into her neighbor's garbage cans and had to stop running for three days because he bruised his ankle.

Three months in, and he almost runs into them again when she pops out of her front door to jog next to him. He doesn't say anything, and she's got headphones in, so neither does she.

It's not as awkward as he thinks it could be, he just hopes to god she doesn't suddenly burst into song, because he's not afraid to trip a girl. They don't always run in silence, sometimes she asks about his mom, and he talks about her dads, and it's kind of almost a friendship.

It becomes a routine, one that they keep until the day after he eggs her house for the first time with the football team. The next morning he runs past, and she doesn't come out, and he runs two more miles than usual.

\----------

Two days after they lie on his floor, during which he cried like a fucking girl and she talked about how he must be mathematically challenged to not be able to understand how to find the length of the sides on a right triangle, she's standing beneath his window tossing rocks that are in no way making it anywhere near his window.

Her hair's up in a ponytail, headphones wrapped around her neck. She's wearing her running clothes, and a smile that sort of resembles a smirk. She raises an eyebrow when he hesitates, and he lets out a slight laugh before throwing on a hoodie. It's getting increasingly hard to say no to her and that should worry him, but it really, really doesn't.

They run six miles and she doesn't even flinch.

\----------

Here's the thing: He's always been a cliché. So, really, no one should expect anything else from him.

It's a Cheerio. All blonde and leggy, and honestly he's drunk out of his mind, because he may have admitted he loved Rachel but he's not a _you make me want to be a better man_ type of guy.

But he is, admittedly, a _run when things get too serious_ type, but his dad taught him how, so cheers for daddy issues.

She finds out because Lima's about the size of a small sorority, and gossips just like one, too. She may have the biggest personality he's ever seen but she's already done confrontation with Finn and hated every minute of it, so she, instead, proceeds to ignore him like the plague. (On the bright side, he finally understands what everybody means when they say that silence can be the loudest sound in the entire world.)

Monday morning following his drunken debauchery, and he finds out that, apparently, everybody else's relationships depended on his without his knowledge.

Finn sucker punches him again, and Puck begins to think his (former) best friend can be like the _biggest girl_ ever. Because, honestly, Puck spent two full weekends teaching Finn how to throw a proper punch, and that no matter what, you don't punch a guy unexpectedly. Ever. It's insulting.

Anyway, Quinn freaks out in the middle of the hallway, screaming about how she'll always be second best to the "broadway _bitch_ " and isn't Finn just the "biggest dick", and if his face wasn't so swollen, he might laugh. Instead, he hides in the locker rooms for the first three periods, because he has definitely got something in his eye from hitting the floor, which has always been dusty, and it's making his eyes water. No, seriously, he has _allergies_.

He refuses to even broach the topic of Artie and Tina, or Kurt and Mercedes, or anybody else's issues, because that isn't his fault. Despite popular opinion judging from the glares he gets. And dude, they don't even like Rachel so what. the. fuck.

He doesn't even see Rachel that first day, but the next morning he runs past her house and nothing happens. And suddenly his face isn't the only thing that hurts. Because, who knew an organ that he doubted he even had could split so easily in two.

It's easy to change his running path, and he adds three more miles, just so his heart will beat loud enough in his ears to drown out the sound of failure that's been playing on repeat.

Two days later, and he figures out that Rachel's kind of like a two liter of pop, in which dropped too many times will explode. (And yeah, he skipped metaphors in English. Sue him.)

She tosses it at him during a passing period, smirks, and everything just stops.

It's icy cold, and cherry-flavored, and is dripping down his back into his underwear, and all he can do is stare at her. Because this Rachel, this new bitter, revenge-filled Rachel, is worse than _silent_ Rachel ever was. Suddenly he can't breathe.

He's pretty sure it's too late to change it, though, so he buys a bottle of whiskey and skips the rest of the day.

If he's going for broke, he might as well go out with a bang.

\----------

He wakes up alone, exhausted, and with a hangover reminiscent of the one's he gets around his dad's birthday.

What he notices most, though, is that he is numb. And he doesn't know whether to be nervous or relieved. He picks relieved when he glances over at the red stained shirt on his dresser, and tries to locate the tequila bottle under his bed. Because honestly, he's really rather stay that way.)

\----------

He can remember every detail of the day his dad left.

He had rolled over, uncomfortable in a bed too hot, and just knew. The funny thing was that there were no obvious signs. He couldn't hear the crying, the deep, gulping sobs that he would listen to through his door at night later, couldn't see the letter taped to the refrigerator. It was just a feeling, the smell of change that leaked under all the doors of the house and seeped into everything.

He still hasn't gotten the smell to disappear, entirely.

He stumbled out of his life, and into a tragedy, and lost which way was up. He lit dumpsters on fire, and joined football and never, ever told Finn about the nights he'd spend curled up and bargaining with God for his dad.

He taught Finn how to hold his liquor, and screwed his way through both the girls' volleyball and soccer teams until he became first-string, and started in on a Cheerio's only kick. He shaved his head, and built walls, and made sure that when he walked through the halls everybody was too scared of getting their faces smashed in to notice the cracks.

He has to say that out of everything he's failed at, he excels at acting.

He makes high school memories that he can't really remember, and waits for the day he can leave this crappy little town, and be able to breathe again.

Then Finn joins Glee and somehow drags him along, and he takes his first deep breath in forever. When he exhales, it sounds an awful lot like Rachel Berry.

Quinn gets pregnant, and he goes back on a ventilator.

\----------

Finn comes by because the guy has never been good at being alone, and he briefly wonders if they've become the next Jason Street and Tim Riggins.

It's the alcohol talking.

He doesn't open the door, though. His mom's picking up boyfriend number whatever, and his sister's at a sleepover, and he just wants to sit. and drink, and maybe die tonight. But because they've been best friends for too freaking long, and he's like freakishly tall, Finn just takes the spare key from the top of the door frame and stumbles in, all arms and legs and sympathy that is scrawled across his face with permanent marker.

He doesn't move. Finn apparently failed Communication 101, like he did Algebra, and takes that as a _come sit next to me and stop me from drinking myself to death_ signal.

It makes his chest hurt, and he puts his head between his knees to hide the fact that he's probably going to cry soon.

\----------

He thinks he could have loved Quinn. Once upon a time, where fairies flew across the sky, and the princess didn't have a reputation to uphold. He gets his own reputation so that when she comes crawling back to him, he can smirk and slam the door in her face.

It never happens.

\----------

It's Thursday when he, technically just Finn but whatever, finally manages to get him to school, and for some reason he expects it to be different. It's not.

The football players smack him on the back and tell him they're glad he finally got over his Broadway fetish, and Quinn, who made up with Finn, is still a bitch, and he gets a text midway through fourth period from Santana about her underwear, and he doesn't remember losing this much control over his life.

He doesn't bother with Glee, but apparently Mr. Shue isn't willing to lose another student to high school drama, and sends Ms. Pillsbury after him.

She catches him in the hallway a couple of minutes after the final bell rings, and all he wants to do is go home and sleep. Or drink. Maybe a combination no matter the chance that he might just choke on his on vomit. So he stops her in the middle of a speech oh so similar to the ones Mr. Shue gives after he's talked to Sue Sylvester, and tells her that unless she turns around and walks away he's going to throw up all over her and watch as they cart her off to the emergency room.

She runs off like he threatened to set her on fire, and he's going to hell.

\----------

He dreams of the day he graduates like it's happening to tomorrow.

He'll walk because his mom will want a chance to meet single guys, and there's no place better then a high school graduation. At least to her.

His bags will already be packed and in the back of his truck. The tank will be filled; a map on the dashboard and he'll drive west until fall. He'll go to college, and get a degree in something inconsequential, and have a job he hates just to prove everybody in this fucking town _wrong_.

Except, now, his compass is pointing east, and there's a brunette in his front seat who won't shut the hell up the entire ride.

He blames it on the scotch, and decides he'll put his bags up front.

When he wakes up on Saturday in another girl's bed without any memories of the night before, he wonders if he's going to have to just go through the motions of living until he gets out of this place.

It'd be depressing if he could feel anything.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are two equal but opposing forces and he takes a step forward just to watch her take a step back. She's in constant motion, and he's just trying to keep up.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

He's failed every science class he's had since eighth grade, and yet he can't seem to forget this.

Maybe because his life revolves around it.

His dad leaves, and he loses the ability to trust anyone. His mom skips from boyfriend to boyfriend, so none of his relationships are ever permanent. He realizes he loves Rachel too late, and she gets caught making out with a guy named Brett in the back of a movie theatre. He'd call it karma, if he believed in it.

He hasn't spoken to her since the day before he slept with that blonde whose name he can't remember, and hasn't looked her in the eye since she threw a cherry slushie at him, but right now he's doing both in an abandoned hallway after glee, and he's always kind of known it'd end here.

They are two equal but opposing forces and he takes a step forward just to watch her take a step back. She's in constant motion, and he's just trying to keep up.

"Isn't there supposed to be a Cheerio wrapped around you right about now?"

It stings more than it should, considering he stopped feeling anything four days ago, and he flinches.

"I'm sorry, okay. I'm sorry, for everything. I just… I'm not good at _this_ ," and he motions between them. "At relationships. I've never really had an example. I just… I panicked."

It's obviously the wrong thing to say, and she explodes into motion, stepping forward. In response he steps back, and the world continually spins around them.

"No. You don't get to make excuses. _You_ screwed up. _You_ hurt me. This is no one else's fault but yours. Not your dad's, not your mom's, and certainly not mine. You seem to think that you're irreversibly damaged or something, so that you have an excuse for sleeping around or spending your days drunk out of your mind. Get over yourself, Noah. "

By the time she she's done, she's out of breath and halfway to tears, and he'd probably notice this if he wasn't having the same reaction.

She drops her head, sighs, looks way too old for her age. Like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, and he's pretty sure that he's been adding to the pile for far too long. "Look even if you didn't cheat, we wouldn't have stood a chance. We still _hate_ each other on some level, and we're on two completely different channels. Sooner or later one of us would have just given up; at least it happened before we became too invested," she continues. "We should just burn our bridges now. Move on with our lives. I'm tired of hating you." She steps to the right towards the front doors, towards Brett, and he copies her automatically, stepping to _his_ own right so that they're in different places with the same views.

"Sophomore year." And she cocks her head half annoyed and half confused, and he would laugh if any of this was remotely funny.

"Sophomore year, first period English class. We were writing that paper about famous quotes, and Mrs. Anderson made me ask you to tutor me because I hadn't been to class in two weeks."

Her emotions flip a coin, and lands on anger; her mouth stretches into a flat line. "I don't have any idea what this has to do with our previous discussion. You're not making any-"

"I picked the first one I saw: 'We cross our bridges when we come to them, and burn them behind us with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.' You said that that was ridiculous. That no one can really just walk away from things like that. It will always be there, imprinted in our minds."

"And you told me to stop acting forty-years old and mumbled something about taking your chances with Mr. Anderson. I remember."

He half laughs, surprised at how much he remembers about a day last year. "You asked me if I was illiterate."

Her eyes which were glazed over, half absorbed in a memory, suddenly harden and he flinches before the words are even out of her mouth.

"Yeah, and you slushied me twice the next day before watching Dan Hathaway write freak across my locker. What's your point? That for twenty seconds last year you stopped being a complete jackass, and actually listened to what I was saying. "

And suddenly he's angry, furious with her because he's trying, the best he knows how and is this really supposed to be this hard.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Dammit, Rachel," he runs a hand through his hair, "if you ever just stopped talking for five seconds maybe you'd be able to hear what I've been trying to tell you."

He walks away, because it's his turn, and doesn't even look to see if she's walking the other direction.

Something unrecongizable hangs in the air, until it falls and shatters to the ground, but neither are there to hear it happen. So maybe it doesn't.

\----------

He has his first real drink three years after he gets a best friend, six months after Finn's dad dies, and three weeks after his dad leaves a note on the fridge.

He steals a scotch bottle from the collection under his mom's bed and invites Finn over because, honestly, he's in as much pain as Puck is, and this could be, like, an awesome bonding experience. Or something.

Anyway, it's not cool like in the movies. They spend most of the time knocking things over and making a mess, which Puck realizes, even inebriated, he'll eventually have to clean up.

In the morning his mouth is dry and his head feels like it did after he got a concussion, and Finn's vomiting in the upstairs bathroom, but sometime between cleaning up the broken glass from the light bulb in his closet and finding aspirin, he realizes that for the first time in three full weeks he woke up and didn't immediately think of his dad.

It's the first step towards alcoholism, and he finds that he doesn't really care.

The point is this:

There's a moment, during that week together, that he becomes conscious of the fact that being around Rachel gives him the same feeling he got that morning.

Rachel is patron, but he thinks she might kill him faster.

\----------

There's a burn on his arm.

It's slightly below the crease of his elbow, and he got it when he was eleven. After his dad, and before he lost his virginity to a Cheerio, when he was between vices and decided to try a cigarette.

It really wasn't that bad, and he looked extra badass with it in one hand and a beer in the other, he'd probably still have the habit if it wasn't for _her_.

She caught him, out by the dumpsters next to the middle school during third period and he briefly wondered why she was even out there until his eye caught the doctor's note she held between two fingers.

It annoyed had him, improbably, that she was there, not that they weren't close enough for her to tell him why she was leaving school to go to the doctor. Obviously.

Anyway, he was halfway through taking a drag when she started in, eyes widening as she did.

"Noah, did you not understand the lecture Ms. Lyle gave about the consequences of smoking. Nicotine is extremely addictive, and remember the pictures of that guy's lungs she showed-"

He stops her there, because she already doesn't sound like she's going to stop soon, and seriously this was supposed to relax him.

"Wow, Berry, who knew you cared so much about the condition of my health." He'd long ago perfected the smirk that meant he was implying something besides what he was actually saying, and evidently she had pulled her head out of her ass long enough to learn that.

It had the desired effect, and a blush crept from her cheeks to the collar of her shirt. He thought _victory_ , and that had always been his first, second, third mistake with her.

The only reason he's still paying attention when she says it, is the way she had straightened up to look him directly in the eye before she twisted the knife.

"Somebody has to." She walks away and it's not the best comeback, but she _knows_. About his dad leaving, and his mom drinking and it hits that soft bruise that never seemed to heal.

The cigarette drops out of his mouth, hits his arm on the way down. It's the first scar she'll cause, but certainly not the last.

Here's the thing:

He's not dying, he's trying to live. But that's irrelevant when it comes to her, so she still continues to try and save him. Until she doesn't.

\----------

He starts to think in physics terms because Rachel's still dating Brett, and he honestly has nothing better to do then listen to Neil Diamond over and over, and that's just pathetic.

In the absence of a net force, a body either is at rest or moves in a straight line with constant speed.

And that explains everything. At least when he's drunk.

Rachel, well, she's the net force. Something always in his way, the emergency exit to the burning building he insists on standing in, and she's the only one who can step in his way without getting caught up in his rush to self-destruction.

She stands her ground, and looks him in the eye, and he has no choice but to stop.

He keeps expecting her to show up at his door, but she doesn't, and he's not quite sure what that means.

Rachel Berry's anything but stupid, and he knows she knew exactly what he was going to tell her that day in the hallway when they were playing the same side of two magnets.

But she still went back to Brett, and that's on his shoulders alone, because he broke her, and then _he_ walked away.

The thing is: he stopped trying, stopped fighting, and it's about damn time he started again.

\----------

Halfway through that week he tries to forget, he gets in his car and realizes she's invaded every inch of his life without ever trying.

There's CDs on his backseat with titles he's only heard in the choir room while he's half paying attention. His Neil Diamond CD, though, is suspiciously absent.

It's habit to put a bottle of water in his cup holder each morning because she's always so freaking worried about her immune system; the world will end if she got sick. And a hair band is twisted around the door handle, because she always needs to have something to do with her hands when they're in the car.

Westside Story's in his DVD player at home, and his room now runs three degrees hotter because the girl is always, always freezing cold.

He buys two slushies on the way to pick her up, one grape, one cherry, and he's suddenly hit with thought that he could actually like this girl.

It scared him to death that he wasn't terrified of the possibility.

\----------

The first morning he doesn't wake up hung over is enlightening. So he runs five miles, and walks into first period on time for the first time in two weeks. The look on his teacher's face is almost as good at the look on hers when he walks past her locker.

Making amends starts because Glee still looks at him like he's scum, and he's realized it's not because of Rachel. He starts with Artie and really, if a few bruised knuckles and locking the captain of the hockey team in a port-a-potty could fix everything, life would be pretty awesomely easy.

He may be trying for redemption, but he's no saint, so he counts it as his good deed for the day. He'll work on everybody else tomorrow.

\----------

Eight months after his dad leaves, his mom gets a boyfriend.

He looks, well, he looks like the kind of guy who could hack up the entire family and then sit down for a beer. Travis is a guy she met at work, and god help him if that's not where she meets the next seven. He smells like axe, and beer, and when he shifts just right, pot. He wants to say, 'can I call you daddy, mister shady drug dealer?' but has long ago realized that his mom is more stable with a guy, no matter who he is.

His mom's already on the 'this is good we're moving on' train, and he can't even stop gritting his teeth long enough to call her on the bullshit she's spewing.

She acts like she didn't see if coming. Like the guy hadn't slowly been inching his way to the door since five minutes after the first time he walked in, and a son should never pity his mom.

When someone leaves his mom for the second time in a year, he decides he'll never be that person. You can't disappoint someone if they don't expect anything from you.

He still learns the guitar from the second guy, and the piano from the fourth, because he's never been one to turn down opportunites.

Except, you know, all the important ones.

Catastrophe strikes two months into number five, and yeah, he probably should have known.

Jeff is just out of prison, but his mom didn't know that. And Jeff has a drug problem, and he kind of hopes his mom didn't know that, either. But honestly, he doesn't know his mom at all, anymore. Anyway, Jeff backhands her on a hot night in July, and almost breaks her jaw.

He's twelve. It's not the first time, and it sure as hell won't be the last.

And people still wonder how he ends up screwing his therapist?

\----------

He lost his heart somewhere around tenth grade. He had always been a bastard, but never a _cold_ one.

She's drunk, and pissed off, and his mom never used to be this broken. He gets caught making out with Becky Paulson on the back porch. It should have been obvious from the smell of scotch and the fresh bruise on her collarbone. It should have been, but it's not, so he mouths off anyway.

But by then he was past furious and past numb, and honestly he's saying it before his mind is processing it. 'I can't wait to get the hell out of here' he spits at her after Becky stumbles out the front door, muttering about high school boys.

She steps back slightly, before rearing forward, coming close enough to touch him. Her eyes are focused, too focused for all the empty bottles in the recycling bin, and he steps back purely for self-preservation.

(It's weird, comparing _this_ mom to the one who gets up early on Saturdays after working two shifts just to make breakfast, and he'll stop doing it after awhile.)

It's bitter and slightly slurred, not something that he should take seriously, because scotch tends to mess with people's judgment. But it also makes them honest, so he still does.

"I knew you'd always follow in your father's footsteps."

When he gets up in the morning, there's breakfast on the table and the liquor bottles are cleared off the fridge, and everything's okay after that. For awhile at least. And maybe she's just playing mom for the first time in months, but probably she remembers more than she's letting on.

Except she crossed a line she can't uncross, and he avoids her for the next two weeks, just because.

\----------

He had a plan. A horrible, suckish, suicidal plan. But a _plan_ nonetheless.

He was going to serenade her in front of the entire school, and make an ass of himself, and beg her to forgive him. It was going to be _romantic_ and she'd fall to her knees in front of him. Yeah, he had a plan and then she went and fucked it up.

Well, technically, he both fucked it up to begin with, but seriously he made the plan, so he call it a draw.

He catches her profile out of the corner of his eye, on his way to his truck. He goes to turns away, because Brett's picking her up, and she's half in the car, half out. Then he trips over the curb, wonders why he can't breathe.

When the air returns to his lungs, it hits him like a gut punch. She's glowing, all bright and shiny new, and he wonders if she was ever like this because of him. It's then, and only then, that his heart comes back, and he realizes he can't do it.

He can't serenade her or make an ass out of himself. His plan is screwed, and it's her fault.

Because no, he doesn't think she ever looked that happy with him.

\----------

Once, they had a conversation. Actually it's just four sentences, set three days after their fight in the hallway when she left to be with Brett, but those four sentences meant just as much as a whole dictionary of words.

It wasn't bitter, or sarcastic, or stupid. They weren't fighting, and she's not yelling, and he can quote every word.

It goes like this:

I could have loved you, I think. If you had let me.

I would have loved you, I think. If you had let me.

But he's Puck and she's Rachel, so when the bell rings and the hallway floods with students, they leave, and don't ever look back.

He thinks that maybe this losing hearts thing, works like dominoes. Jeff took his mom's, she took his, and so it was his turn.

Who knew he'd choose his best friends.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noah "Puck" Puckerman is sixteen when he falls in love, seventeen when he falls out of love, and nineteen when learns happiness comes with a price.

The first time he breaks one of his own bones, it's a week before his dad leaves.

The tree in the back yard seems a lot higher up when you're falling from it, and when he first lands he can't even breathe. By the time he finally gets the strength to yell, it's long and loud and only interrupted by his dad's face appearing directly above his.

"Hey, kid, stop. Just breathe. Stop moving. Noah I said _stop_!" He's pinned, his dad's hands wrapped around his wrists, and a knee pressing slightly into his chest.

"Stop okay, you're okay. It's just your ankle. We're gonna get it fixed, alright." His dad's out of breath, and in his ten-year old mind Puck assumes it's because of their struggle.

(Later, much later, he begins to think that maybe it because he was panicking, but by then he hates his dad so it doesn't matter.)

The day before he meets Quinn Fabray, he breaks two fingers, and Finn nearly falls off the porch. When he finally gains his balance, he jogs the couple of feet to Puck, practically sobbing. But Puck's a badass, so he shrugs off the pain and Finn's apologies, and forgets about it.

His mom finds him trying to clean up the milk he drops later because his fingers are so swollen he can't grip anything, and she drives to the ER like his appendix is exploding.

Quinn's there with her parents, who are giving Bibles to the terminally ill or something, and she introduces herself like he's already dying.

(He still hasn't realized that broken bones seem to precede big events in his life. But he will.)

The end of this game Puck and Rachel are playing goes like this:

The football team is playing Richardson, and they're neither blind nor deaf, so everybody sort of figures they'll lose.

Except, they're winning 21-0.

Puck's not hung over and Finn's not angry and Quinn's on the sidelines where she should be. It's the closest they've been to well-adjusted since before she got pregnant, and everybody sort of suspects that's one of the reasons the team's doing so well.

It's half true. The less obvious reason why Noah Puckerman hasn't dropped the majority of passes from Finn Hudson has something to do with the brunette girl in the stands.

Puck can see her in his peripheral vision, and even if he couldn't, he'd still know she was there.

She's four rows up, right on the 50 yard line, and every once in awhile she puts two fingers in her mouth and whistles high and long. It's unnerving,and settling, all at the same time.

(So, the fact that Brett is sitting next to her, his hand disappearing just below the line of the seats in front of them, seems unnatural and disconcerting, because she has never come to a game.)

Anyway, no one's expecting the world to end, because tragedy doesn't strike until the last play of the game in the movies, and they're still in the third quarter.

Later on people will tell a hundred different versions of this story. Ones that blame the other team, ones that tell of this kid who just wanted to win for his small town team, ones where he's a hero.

Honestly, though, it's not a bad hit, he didn't want to win for anything but a scholarship out of here, and he's no hero. Just a friend with bad timing.

Finn's right guard has always sucked. Lindman spends the game watching the cheerleaders, and Finn ends up on his back eighty-five percent of the time. Sure, Tanaka screams about it most of the game, but the teams they've played have never been that good or that big, and Finn's good at shaking it off.

They're trying a new play, and Puck stops ten feet from Finn to let Allen by. So it's instinct to yell to Finn to move, when he sees number 34 barreling towards his best friend. He never sees the other guy, the one who doesn't realize Puck doesn't have the ball until it's too late to stop his momentum.

He's hit from the right, hard and fast, and the last thing he remembers is the complete silence from the stands.

-O-

Their story has always been a cliché, but when he wakes up, she's not there. Quinn is, and Finn is, and his mom, and for right now that's enough. Until he realizes he can't move his legs.

After a few very panicked moments, during which he wonders how: one, he's ever going to get the heck out of Lima now, and two, if Glee was going to be able to work around two kids in wheelchairs, Finn pins his arms to the bed and tells him that if he doesn't stop flopping around, he'll rip his stitches.

Then, and only then, does the pain hit. He passes back out after red starts to slowly stain the white hospital sheets, and black eats away at his vision.

The second time he wakes up no one's there but her, and he thinks he prefers it the other way.

She's looking at him like he purposely got pummeled into the field, and it reminds him of the day Derek Hutchins threw a slushie at him and sent this whole screwed up relationship into motion.

"You're not paralyzed," she says quietly, and he wonders who else heard about his panic attack earlier.

"Yeah, I got that from the pain that is currently shooting up and down my legs right now." It's not as biting as usual, and he's suddenly aware of how tired he is.

"You have three broken ribs, stitches on your right elbow, and a dislocated shoulder," she says, filing off his injuries like they're not a d-

"It's not a death sentence Puck, which by the way, you were saying out loud. And I really think the doctors should check again for a concussion, because you seem to have a hard time focusing, and I'm sure you're in pain. Do you want me to get a nurse? She can give you more pain medication if you need it? Who am I kidding, of course you need it."

It takes his brain a few seconds to catch up, and then it hits him. Rachel Berry is freaking out, and not in her diva _someone else got the lead_ way, but in a legitimate _I have no idea what to do_ way.

He's goes to exhale around a _woah_ , and then remembers his broken ribs.

"No, I'm fine. I just," he cuts off, clears his throat of the lump the size of a baseball that's been forming. "Where is everyone?"

She looks down, hair curtaining her face for a second before she meets his gaze head on.

"You're mom's getting something from the cafeteria down stairs, and Finn and Quinn went home, they've been here for hours. Your doctors won't let anybody else in since you ripped your stitches the last time. I had to threaten to call my father." She sighs, sits down in the chair next to his bed, and tilts her head back, eyes closing.

It's then that he gets a good look at her, for the first time in what feels like forever. The exhaustion covers her face like a stage mask, and her hair is curly in the way it only gets when she runs her hands through it too many times. It's makes her stunning, but it's sort of terrifying, and where in the _hell_ is his morphine?

"How long have you been here?" His voice is hoarse from lack of use, and it would be embarrassing if he could get past the pain that just breathing causes.

"About an hour. After you got hit, everything just _erupted_ and-" she trails off because she's Rachel and she knows that when he drops his head and starts to pick at his cuticles, it's a sign that he doesn't want to talk about it. About getting hit in front of a crowd of people, or where Brett is while they're having this conversation, and that has always been a small part of why he fell for her.

She sighs again, stands, leans one hip on the side of his bed and looks him right in the eye.

"You scared the hell out of me, you know. Out of everybody."

"Yeah, sorry. Look you can leave, I'm sure you don't want to be here, anyway." It's an attempt at bitter that falls short by miles and ends up somewhere in broken territory. He shifts slightly, winces and then decides it's be a nice time to take a nap. Or kill himself.

He's half asleep when he hears her drop back into the chair.

"Not true, never true, Puck. You know that."

-O-

Grace, he thinks, is a funny thing.

It's found in the rubble of tragedy. Something no one deserves or gains, but something everyone should experience. His grace comes in the form of a petite brunette who calls him Noah.

In third grade, when he still had a dad, and he and Finn didn't know the word betrayal, his teacher told the class to write down what they wanted to be when they were older.

Nick Carlson wrote down an astronaut, and Finn wrote down a marine, and the freaky girl in the back of the class who ate her hair wrote down something that looked vaguely like _dead_ , but Puck paused before writing anything. When his teacher told them to pass up their papers he hid his beneath his spelling work book, and passed the rest up.

As the class was leaving for recess, his teacher called him back into the room.

"Noah, why didn't you turn the assignment today?" She doesn't look angry, and he doesn't know until later that she half expected him to say he couldn't write.

"Because… I... can I just go outside now, please?" The teacher sighs, because Noah has already seemed a little behind the other students and she's learned to pick her battles.

"That's fine, go along and play." He shuts the door a little too hard, and the stuff on the desk closest to it falls off. It's Noah's desk, and when she bends to pick up his spelling book a paper flutters to the ground. On it, in a scrawl that's undeniably the little boy's, are three words.

Like my dad.

(Thirteen years later, and he was.)

He had drifted in and out of sleep since their conversation, and to be honest he doesn't understand why she's still there. His mom, after a lot of convincing by his doctors and Rachel, has gone home to shower and sleep. He's fine, they insisted and he wonders why they still haven't noticed the fact that he's drowning right in front of them.

It was easy when he thought she hated him. When she was put together and smiling, when he thought she didn't care. But Rachel Berry has been sitting by his hospital bed for the last three hours and it's not easy anymore.

Suddenly, he's tired. Of secrets, and pain, and avoidance, and he's done. Noah Puckerman's _done_ lying, and pretending like he doesn't care. So, he sighs, keeps his eyes closed, begins to talk.

"I don't care. I don't care that you make me want to set myself on fire, or that you're completely crazy, because honestly I don't think I would love you this much if you weren't. I'm in love with you because… because you organize your socks by color, and because you seem to have no idea how the skirts you wear affect the male population of Lima. I love you, because you're graceful, until you try to walk up stairs, and because even though you never shut up any other time, you know that sometimes I just want to sit in silence."

He stops, squeezes his eyes shut, and blows out a hard breath.

"I love you, because even after I hurt you so badly, you're still sitting here convincing my mom to stop worrying about me, and take care of herself."

"And I know I've said it a thousand times, and I know it probably won't change anything. But-" another breath, but this time he opens his eyes.

"I'm so sorry, for everything. For the way I treated you in freshman year, and for every time I laughed at the name on your locker or the slushie on your clothes. But most of all, I'm sorry for the past year. You didn't deserve any of it."

She looks like she's crying, but he can't really tell because he may or may not be, too. He half expects her to walk away.

She does.

-O-

"Why now?" It's phrased like a question, but said like an accusation, and when he looks up she's staring him right in the eye.

He's surprised, but refuses to show it, so he lets out a humorless laugh. "Because I'm a sadistic bastard, remember."

It's three in the morning, and he doesn't even bother wondering how she managed to sneak in past visitor's hours. When he looks up, she's staring right at him, and he's guessing that wasn't the answer she was looking for. But he'll be damned if he opens his heart again today.

He shifts slightly, fingers the thin sheet on his bed, and sighs. "Berry, I'm tired. In case you've forgotten while tearing my heart out, I did almost die today so if you don't mind," He gestures towards the door and closes his eyes, praying that for the first time she actually takes a hint.

The chair doesn't shift, and the heels on her shoes don't hit the tile, and he's like _damn it_ Rachel.

"You can't do that." Her voice is softer than before, pitched lower like she's talking to herself not him. "You can't tell me all those things, and then just put your walls back up."

"You walked out. Don't act surprised." It's supposed to be angry and bitter, but he's exhausted and like _this close_ from pulling a menstrual girl, and crying.

There's no answer for awhile. Finally, the chair moves and he turns his head sideways to watch her shadow pace itself on the wall.

"I know, and I'm sorry for that, but… and I mean… this is screwed up." She's dropped her vocabulary and apparently the sane-ish part of her brain, and he doesn't want to try and keep up with her anymore.

She stops suddenly, her shoes squeaking, and he winces against the sound.

"I don't have all the answers," here he snorts, but she pushes on because she's Rachel Berry and she doesn't let a little thing like distaste stop her.

"I don't have all the answers, and this will probably still fall apart in the end but-"

His bed shifts under the weight of her hands and he knows she's expecting him to finish her thought, to take the pressure off of her and place it on his shoulders. But he won't, not this time. It's her turn to make an ass of herself, thank you very much.

"Brett loves me," He flinches, hard, and his broken ribs protest enough for him to force out an exhale. A string of obscentities get lodged between the lump in his throat, and his clenched teeth.

"Brett loves me, and I thought I loved him. So I walked out, I left and got in my car. And then I just sat there. For hours. I couldn't think of one legitimate reason why I shouldn't love him; he's handsome and intelligent and polite and likes to discuss world news with my dads." She begins to shift her weight from one foot to the other, a nervous habit he's never picked up on.

"But he has no idea who Neil Diamond is, and has no ability to sing whatsoever. He doesn't tilt his head when he's staring at his algebra book, or drive one handed."

She stops, takes a deep breath, and turns so she's staring right at him. It makes him fidget and seriously is he not being the biggest, fucking girl right now?

"I love you. That's it. There's nothing else to it."

He's staring at her, remembering the way she looked in the hallway as she tossed crushed ice at him, and he just can't. So he turns away, and mumbles out something that kind of sounds like _I love you, too_ in his head, but definitely sounds like _well isn't that unfortunate_ coming out of his mouth.

She responds so fast the last syllable isn't even out of his mouth yet.

"You're a coward."

"I- wait, what?"

"You're a coward. You run at the first sign of anything that could be filed under emotional."

"So do you!" He doesn't realize they've been getting progressively louder since the beginning of their conversation, until a nurse pops her head in the door, disapproval coloring her features. One glance from an enraged Rachel, though, has her scurrying back, closing the door as she does.

The minute it shuts, Rachel visibly deflates.

"This isn't going to be easy. It's going to be really hard. But… I want to try."

He can't help it, he grins.

"What?" She's half-serious, half-curious and god help him if he doesn't love this girl.

"Did you steal the first part of that from the Notebook?"

"Did you _watch_ the Notebook?" And for just a second, it eases the tension.

When he sobers, he watches her closely, gauging how she's going to react to what he's about to say. But she's staring right back at him so he takes a deep breath, and sledgehammers his walls.

"We could suck at this. We _have_ sucked at this."

He half expects her to walk away.

She doesn't.

When he gets out of the hospital, they do that weird couple thing that he always sucked at with Santana, and never did with Quinn. He's never bought flowers, or picked up a girl from her front door, and it should be awkward, but relationships have never been his strong point, or hers, so they just sort of stumble along together.

Her dads insist on having dinner with 'the juvenile who is leading their angel into a world of darkness', or something equally as true. Anyway, it probably wouldn't be as bad if she didn't keep smirking at him across the table, and it's _his_ smirk that he _unintentionally taught her_ , as an added bonus.

Later when he's helping load the dishwasher, and rubbing the spot on his leg where she kicked him after the third time one of them asked him a question while he wasn't paying attention, he gets cornered.

He's half-expecting the 'don't defile my little girl' speech, which he does get, but it's followed by a 'so you play football' conversation, that ends terrifyingly on the couch watching a game.

(Puck plays it off with what he hopes appears like indifference, later, but when Paul pats him on the back during halftime and asks him about his own high school football career, his cheeks still redden, and his eyes still sting, and Kurt's ass is so getting kicked the next time he sees the gay kid with those fucking like magical girl emotion-giving powers.)

-O-

Loving Rachel Berry is like loving math: something that no one else understands. It makes him want to rip out his own hair and laugh at the same time. It's the most difficult thing he'll ever have to do, but when he walks across the stage at graduation and watches her give him that smile, then yeah it was worth it.

(He sucks at metaphors, remember.)

Fate agrees with his plans, but only halfway. He drives her east to Juilliard, but he applies for a football scholarship to Illinois.

When he pulls up to her house, her dads are sobbing in a way that makes him want to duck his head, and start a fight. It's still achingly uncomfortable sometimes, in the house that's filled with enough estrogen to make him wince. But they know which college he's attending, and his favorite type of pie, and that's more than he can say for _his_ family.

All the way there, they play pretend, and try to forget the 790 miles, give or take, that will separate them. But later when they're standing by his truck, her stuff already unpacked, he twirls the keys in his hand and tries really hard not to throw up or cry or something else annoyingly Kurt-like.

She's got a hand wrapped around the hem of his t-shirt, and she's crying, and who the hell thought they'd be like… _undysfuntional_. (A voice in his head that sounds terrifyingly like the petite brunette's in front of him, reminds him that he just made up a word, but he's had years of practice at ignoring her.)

"I'm going to miss you, Noah." She whispers it like some sort of private joke, he has to clear his throat before responding.

"I know crazy, but Thanksgiving is like three months away, suck it up." She squints up at him, and for half a second he thinks she might have missed the underlying affection in his tone, but a slow, blinding smile crawls itself across her face, and she pushes up on her toes to kiss him.

"Thanksgiving's in November. _Two_ months, Noah. Thank goodness, you are physically coordinated enough to be mediocre at football." Right then is when he realizes that he's going to miss this girl more than he thought possible. It may be two years after the day he broke a rib and fixed a heart, but the road to well-adjusted is long and hard, so he just kisses her forehead and laughs.

Ten minutes later, when he's finally out of her eye sight, he pulls over and cries for the umpteenth time since meeting Rachel Berry.

It makes him feel like such an emotional _girl_.

But hasn't she always had that effect on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a sequel to that I will be posting soon.

**Author's Note:**

> AU from mid-season 1, because I've always felt that things got a little too _set-up_ after that.


End file.
